Will Larry Bell Be Selling Bell’s Brewery Inc?

The future of Bell’s Brewery Inc. ownership may be up in the air. The brewery may be sold, but the story isn’t exactly what you think. In an attempt to guarantee that the brewery is passed down to future generations of the Bell family, Larry has been negotiating with stock holders to buy back the shares he needs to ensure his children will own the brewery in the future. Unfortunately, those negotiations are not going well, and should the negotiations fail, Larry will potentially resort to selling the brewery out now rather than risk his family losing the brewery should anything happen to him. This from MLive:

As early as fall, the decision to sell the nation's 13th largest brewery could be made depending on the outcome of ongoing negotiations with several minority shareholders, company president Larry Bell said.

About $22 million has been spent on the brewhouse and renovating the Eccentric Cafe in downtown Kalamazoo, but the rest of the project is on hold as the company tries to save money in an attempt to buy out 11 of the 14 shareholders, Bell said.

“Unfortunately with the growth and the size the company has gotten to, the alarms are going off to where we have to figure it out or do something else,” Bell said.“I don’t want to sell, but it’s a great time to sell if I had to. There are many willing buyers.

"If it was just a family business, there would be legal maneuvers we could make that would facilitate that kind of transfer across generations. With its current structure, I'm not able to do those sorts of things. It would basically leave us in the position of selling the company upon my death." More details here.

About
Bil Cord

Founder, owner, author, graphic designer, CEO, CFO, webmaster, president, mechanic and janitor for mybeerbuzz.com. Producer and Co-host of the WILK Friday BeerBuzz live weekly craft beer radio show. Small craft-brewer of the craft beer news sites and one-man-band with way too many instruments to play.

RELATED POSTS

0
comments (click to read or post):

Post a Comment

Please leave a comment...I do moderate each comment so it may not appear immediately...and please be nice! You can also comment using Disqus (below) or even comment directly on Facebook (bottom).